How the Girl Guides Won the War. Janie Hampton

      

      JANIE HAMPTON

      

       How the Girl Guides Won the War

      To my mother, who throughout her long life as both

      a Guide and a Brown Owl, has demonstrated that keeping to the rules is not nearly as important as Robert Baden-Powell’s maxim:

       ‘I wouldn’t give tuppence for you if you are not jolly and laughing.’

      Contents

       Cover

       Title page

Illustrations

Introduction

Prologue: Pax Ting

1 We are the Girl Scouts

2 Brownies and Bluebirds

3 Marching in Gas Masks

4 Kinder-Guides

       5 Golondrinas

       6 The Clover Union of Poland

       7 Blackout Blues

       8 Dampers and Doodlebugs

       9 Brownies in China

       10 Thrift and Gift

       11 Princesses and Paupers

       12 Baedeker Bombing

       13 Jersey Island Guides

       14 Japanese Internment

       15 The Warsaw Uprising

       16 Three Aunties

       17 Guides in Auschwitz

       18 Giant Pandas and Frozen Alligators

       19 The City of Polish Children

       20 The Armored Angel of China

       21 The Army of Goodwill

       22 Into the Twenty-First Century

       Acknowledgements

       Bibliography and Sources

       Index

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Illustrations

      Robert Baden-Powell talking to the first Girl Guides in Brighton, 1910. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Guide messengers at the Peace Conference, Versailles, 1919. (© Daily Mail)

      Olave Baden-Powell, with Brownies at the Essex County Rally in 1921. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Guides enjoying an excursion on the Danube during the Pax Ting International Camp in Hungary, August 1939. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Guides helping at a club for evacuees in the Corn Exchange at Bishop’s Stortford in autumn 1939. (© Getty Images)

      The 1st Eynsham Brownie Pack on holiday in Swanage in the last week of August 1939. (Private collection)

      Guides learning how to use a stirrup pump in 1940. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Guides help to run an infant school in Ilford. (© Getty Images)

      Guides bathing an evacuee child. (© Girlguiding UK)

      The vicar of Claybury Park, Ilford, Essex asked Guides to run a nursery in his church hall, 1940. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Olga Malkowska being presented with the Bronze Cross by Queen Elizabeth in December 1939. (© Getty Images)

      Brownies of the 21st Glasgow Brownie Pack, at the Glasgow School for the Deaf, meet a real Brown Owl. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Cockley Cley Kindertransport Guides in Norfolk, 1940. (© Sir Samuel Roberts)

      An Extension Guide taking her fire-lighting test in hospital in 1943. (© Girlguiding UK)

      The 1st Littleport Company collecting waste paper in Cambridgeshire in 1940. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Maps hidden inside the cotton reels collected by Brownies for MI9. (© Trustees of the Royal Air Force Museum, X003-6003/017)

      Guides and Rangers roll up their bedding at the end of camp. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Guides cleaning their teeth beside the latrine at Luccombe Camp, Isle of Wight, 1944. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Guides of the 1st Disley Company near Manchester welcome refugee children from Guernsey on their arrival in June 1940. (© Allied Newspapers Manchester)

      A Guide carrying messages gets directions from a policeman. (© Fox/Getty)

      Guides salvaging a wheelchair during the London Blitz. (© Wimbledon Borough News)

      The 5th Canterbury Company running a soup kitchen after the bombing of Canterbury, 1 June 1942. (© Getty Images)

      The 2nd Gloucester Guide Company cooking sausages after an air raid in 1942. (© Girlguiding UK)

      The 1st Cockington Company collecting jam pots around Torquay in 1942. (© Girlguiding UK)

      Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret sending a message by carrier pigeon on Thinking Day 1943. (© Girlguiding UK)

      The Princess